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Late on Wednesday night, the Star and sportsnet.ca learned that former Blue Jays pitcher Tomo Ohka, who had been dabbling with the knuckleball in 2013, was going to be invited to the Jays’ major-league camp as a nonroster invitee. Anthopoulos confirmed it following the Rule 5 Draft on Thursday morning. Was the GM rolling the dice? He didn’t know what country Ohka pitched in during 2013.

“Minor-league deal, which there’s no downside to it, just take a shot,” Anthopoulos shrugged. “We’re just looking. The fact that we have R.A. (Dickey) here, the fact that we have Josh Thole here, the fact that we have (Mike) Nickeas here as well, why not try to take advantage of that? Bring some guys in and take a look and see where it goes. I have no idea, to be honest with you.”

Dickey imported the knuckler and a Cy Young to the organization with him when he came over last year. Thole and Nickeas both had some experience catching the knuckleball with the Mets.

“Now, how much success (Ohka) has, how much it works is too hard to tell,” the GM continued. “But he does have some of the ingredients and he has the will to do it. Definitely the ingredients are there. When we were doing our work on R.A. just before we got him, it just seemed there were two pretty important things: having a repeatable delivery and being a good athlete. Tomo does.”

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If Ohka shows enough to survive the spring, he would likely be assigned to Double-A New Hampshire, and not just because he can help the staff. The Jays’ catcher of the future for 2015 and beyond, A.J. Jimenez, will likely be with the Fisher Cats — and what better way for the youngster to learn the vagaries of battling the butterfly effect than to catch Ohka every five days?

“There’s definitely some benefits to Jimenez, who can learn to catch him,” Anthopoulos said. “There’s always benefits to having guys like that in camp. You’re sitting there and you say you want to look at (Dioner) Navarro, you want to look at (Erik) Kratz, all these guys, and you have to wait on R.A. every two days to throw a bullpen. At the same time, we feel Tomo might have a shot. We’ll see. I don’t want to make it any more than it is. There’s no such thing as a bad minor-league deal.”

Anthopoulos showed off more of his outside-the-box thinking by making another transaction at the Rule 5 Draft, one that has never been available before. He drafted left-hander Brian Moran from the M’s organization, selecting him sixth, then traded him to the Angels for international cap space and some cash.

Under the terms of the latest CBA, each MLB team is capped in terms of total bonuses that you can pay to international free agents — especially Caribbean prospects. But the cap dollars are tradable.

Moran is a relief pitcher and the Jays already have seven relievers that have no options remaining heading to camp. Anthopoulos said: “There’s some guys out there that we want to take a shot on. Why not, if we can get the cap space.”

The final example of thinking outside the box is his dream of having a mini-camp for knuckleballers, a training camp within the Jays’ spring training camp. He already has Dickey, who would act as inspiration and mentor, and now he has Ohka.

Oh, and he already has a third pitcher in mind.

“There’s not that many players out there willing to throw it,” Anthopoulos said. “For us, it’s we want to try and start to get into that area. We need to get some guys who do throw it and see how it develops. Josh Banks, we talked to about doing this.”

Banks would be another reclamation project. The right-hander was a second-round selection of the Blue Jays in the 2003 draft. He pitched briefly for the Jays and then for the Padres. Now this.

“(Minor league pitching co-ordinator) Dane Johnson called him, he’s just considering it. I remember saying way back when, when I was a scouting assistant, that Josh Banks had a really good (knuckler) but you never thinks he’s really going to throw it. We want to take a look.”

An unofficial summary of the winter meetings as far as the Blue Jays are concerned would show: Roy Halladay signed for one day, Brian Moran selected in the Rule 5 then traded, remaining a Jay for 10 minutes, and finally Tomo Ohka invited to camp as a knuckleballer.

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